Advances in policies, assessment, and assurance aspects of injury prevention, pre-hospital care, acute care, and rehabilitation services have been driven by the systematic collection and analysis of injury data in mandated trauma registries. As front line providers of clinical care, trauma care professionals have ready access to and a profound understanding of such injury data. As such, trauma care professionals have a substantial role in the interpretation of these data to policy makers, the design and advocacy of injury control strategies, and the ultimate development of injury control policy.
Nowhere is comprehensive, data-driven care more important than in the first six hours after injury or an acute illness (for example, stroke, acute coronary syndromes and severe sepsis). The outcome of a trauma or an acute illness is critically dependent on the provision of timely, evidence-based and complete care, for example, before hemorrhage and other forms of shock cause potentially irreversible organ injury or death. Such care often requires seamless coordination across disciplines and between multiple healthcare entities in order to focus the highest standards of care and the rapid and efficient deployment of resources in times of great crisis.
Although trauma systems have made great strides in pre-hospital care and in the creation of highly functional trauma teams and trauma centers, there are still profound gaps in patients' access to uniformly high quality injury care and there are still great opportunities to improve safety and efficiency in the complex environment of acute trauma care. For instance, data generated at the point-of-care that could be used to inform complex decision-making or to improve health system performance is often not collected, lost, or not analyzed due to constraints in time or analytic power, and the chaotic environment of initial care. In addition, new developments in the understanding of the principles and practice of trauma care are often not accessible in a timely manner and are therefore not applied in circumstances when they might prevent a complication or save a life. Accordingly, patients would benefit from a system capable of collecting, analyzing, and presenting data generated at the point-of-care through timely and accurate techniques.